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Zambia: Summit on Human Rights, Technology Effectively Canceled
(Johannesburg) – The Zambian government’s decision to postpone RightsCon 2026, effectively canceling the summit, raises concerns about the authorities’ commitment to free expression and assembly and about possible Chinese government interference, Human Rights Watch said today. The 14th edition of RightsCon was scheduled to be held in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, from May 5 to 8, 2026.
In an April 29 statement, the Zambian government said that the postponement was “necessitated by the need for comprehensive disclosure […] relating to key thematic issues proposed for discussion during the Summit.” The technology and science minister had earlier said that the postponement was to allow for “pending administrative and security clearances” of some speakers. As a result, the RightsCon organizers, Access Now, announced on April 29 that “we do not recommend registered participants travel to Lusaka for RightsCon.”
“The Zambia government’s flimsy reasons for postponing RightsCon suggest that the government wanted to control the summit’s human rights agenda,” said Idriss Ali Nassah, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should fully explain the last-minute cancellation, which is a serious loss for the promotion of human rights.”
Civil society groups have criticized the action. A statement by the Net Rights Coalition and more than 130 digital rights stakeholders said that the postponement and effective cancellation of the event raises concerns about closing the civic space in Zambia.
RightsCon is a leading summit on human rights and technology, where discussions center on building strategies toward a more free, open, and connected digital world. Human Rights Watch staff members were planning to speak at several sessions, including on protecting core internet functions in situations of conflict, the export of surveillance technology, corporate accountability, and the ethics of using technology in human rights research.
“By shutting down RightsCon, the Zambian government is shutting down discussions and opportunities to strategize and connect on some of the most crucial human rights issues of our time,” said Deborah Brown, technology and rights deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s a terrible blow to the digital rights movement in Zambia and globally.”
In 2023, over 300 participants, predominantly from the Global South, who applied for visa-on-arrival, were denied entry and excluded from participating in the RightsCon event in Costa Rica. In 2024, the United Nations Internet Governance Forum was hosted by Saudi Arabia, which discouraged meaningful civil society participation due to fears of surveillance, harassment, and reprisals, and resulted in censorship of human rights discussions.
A leading Zambian academic, Sishuwa Sishuwa, told Human Rights Watch that Zambian authorities may have been worried that delegates to the summit, mostly human rights activists, “would have put the country under scrutiny” for its human rights record. He said that “Zambia has seen severe restrictions on the rights to peaceful assembly, free speech, and freedom of association, the arrests of government critics and political opponents on a variety of charges such as criminal libel, sedition, unlawful assembly, and the broadly expanded laws on hate speech. These themes would have been discussed at the summit, weeks before the start of the official campaign for the August general election.”
In April 2025, the Zambian Parliament enacted the Cyber Security Act and the Cyber Crimes Act. Zambian civil society organizations contended that some provisions of the laws did not adhere to international human rights standards and were a threat to the principles of democracy, transparency, accountability, and rights. The two laws have been used to curtail freedom of expression online and to arrest political opponents.
The Law Association of Zambia petitioned the High Court to declare provisions of the Cyber Crimes Act unconstitutional. The matter is pending in court.
On March 3, the Ministry of Technology and Science had welcomed the hosting of RightsCon 2026 when it met with the organizers and emphasized that the summit was consistent with Zambia’s national development agenda. It also reaffirmed the Zambian government’s commitment to collaborate with the organizers to ensure the successful hosting of the summit. According to some expected participants, the ministry had issued them official letters in February to support granting them visas to attend the conference.
A civil society activist involved in the RightsCon organizing committee in Lusaka told Human Rights Watch that the postponement came after the Chinese government had expressed displeasure to Zambian authorities about invited participants from Taiwan. A Zambian media outlet similarly reported that Zambian authorities were uncomfortable with the participation of “Taiwanese delegates who would potentially speak against China at a venue donated by the Chinese government.”
The Mulungushi Conference Center, which was to host the summit, was refurbished in 2020 with funding from the Chinese government at a reported cost of US$60 million. Zambian authorities at the time described the support as a “gift from […] China” with “no strings attached.” Human Rights Watch could not independently verify that China had a role in the government’s decision. Human Rights Watch requested comment from the Zambian government and the Chinese Embassy in Lusaka but did not receive an immediate response.
China is a major investor in Zambia, particularly in the mining sector, and Zambia is also part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Human Rights Watch has long documented abusive health, safety, and labor conditions associated with Chinese mining interests, some of which pose harm to residents. Despite repeated public concerns and calls for accountability, the Zambian government has for years shown little willingness to effectively regulate these operations.
The cancellation of RightsCon underscores the need for such events to be hosted in countries where the government openly embraces debate on human rights and supports fundamental freedoms, Human Rights Watch said.
“The human rights environment in Zambia has become increasingly hostile to perceived dissent, criticism, and political opposition to the government ahead of the 2026 elections,” Nassah said. “Zambian authorities should take all necessary steps to ensure that it allows for the free exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly and allows for civil society to meet in an environment free of government interference.”
Nepal: Balen Government Should Bring Human Rights Reforms
(Geneva) – Nepal’s recently elected Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) government, led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah, which came to power on a wave of popular demands for change, should use this opportunity to bring lasting protections for human rights and the rule of law, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Commission of Jurists said in a letter to Shah published today.
The organizations made recommendations on 13 areas of human rights, including the transitional justice process, women and girl’s rights, the rights of Dalits and other minorities, the rights of migrant workers, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex (LGBTI) rights, the right to housing, and freedom of expression and association. Some of the new government’s early actions—including the forced eviction of landless people from informal settlements and a proposed ordinance that would dilute the independence of the constitutional council in appointing judges and commissioners to constitutional bodies—appear to violate housing rights and due process protections and show an alarming disregard for procedure and the rule of law, the organizations said.
“The protests by young Nepalis were a demand to end entrenched inequities, and that can only be addressed with transparent and accountable governance,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Many voters have high expectations that the RSP government will deliver real change, and to achieve that, it is crucial for the authorities to hold people accused of human rights violations and abuses and corruption to account in fair trials.”
Nepal’s new government won a landslide majority in a snap election in March 2026 after the previous government collapsed amid youth-led protests in September 2025, during which at least 76 people were killed, mostly unlawfully and by police, and which caused widespread damage to public and private property. The protests, sparked by a sweeping ban on social media sites, demanded an end to corruption and respect for human rights and the rule of law.
The cornerstone of building a culture of accountability should be ensuring a credible, effective, and timely transitional justice process that meets international legal standards to provide truth, accountability, and reparation, particularly for international humanitarian law violations and human rights violations and abuses that were committed during the 1996-2006 internal armed conflict, the groups said. Among those who have not yet received even interim relief are survivors of conflict-related sexual violence. Although the law relating to the transitional justice process was improved in certain aspects by amendments in 2024, shortcomings remain and the process has since stalled, after victims’ groups objected to the appointment of commissioners who they said lacked political independence or expertise.
“Victims and survivors of crimes that were committed during the conflict have waited far too long for justice, while the culture of impunity that took root in that period has contributed to ongoing violations, including the killing of Gen Z protesters,” said Mandira Sharma, director for the Asia and Pacific program at the International Commission of Jurists. “Completing the transitional justice process in line with international legal standards is crucial to building a rights respecting system under the rule of law.”
The organizations called for the authorities to bring those responsible for human rights violations during the Gen Z protest to justice, release unpublished official reports on previous incidents of lethal violence against popular movements dating back to 1990, and implement recommendations by the National Human Rights Commission to appropriately prosecute people against whom there is sufficient evidence of human rights abuses and violations amounting criminal conduct.
Women and girls in Nepal are at heightened risk of rights violations, including sexual violence, which the authorities have done too little to prevent or prosecute, the groups said. Despite being illegal, child marriage remains widespread. Dalits and members of other marginalized communities are also particularly at risk. Successive governments have failed to enforce the 2011 Caste-Based Discrimination and Untouchability (Offense and Punishment) Act or even collect data on caste-based crimes.
Despite Supreme Court rulings, officials have often failed to uphold LGBTI rights, including the right to same-sex marriage and the right of trans people to affirm their gender on official documents.
Nepal depends on the economic contributions of migrant workers, yet they often work in extreme heat and unsafe conditions and face exploitation and exorbitant recruitment fees. The organizations made specific recommendations for steps the government should take to protect migrant workers’ rights during the current crisis in the Persian Gulf, as well as important measures to protect their human rights more generally.
About 40 percent of Nepal’s population is under 18, but children receive only around 4 percent of the government’s social security budget. To help secure the welfare and rights of all Nepali children, the organizations recommend extending the successful Child Grant social security program, which is currently only available in 25 out of 77 districts. The groups also made recommendations about securing other social and economic rights, including the rights to health, education, and housing.
“The people of Nepal have demanded change, and that is what Balendra Shah and the RSP promised during the election campaign,” said Smriti Singh, South Asia director at Amnesty International. “Now the government needs to seize the opportunity and walk the talk to deliver real and lasting change built on respect for Nepal’s international human rights obligations.”
Cambodia: Opposition Leader’s Appeal Denied
(Bangkok) – On April 30, 2026, the Phnom Penh Court of Appeal upheld the politically motivated conviction of the Cambodian political opposition leader Kem Sokha, Human Rights Watch said today. The court extended Sokha’s de-facto house arrest and 27-year sentence that had been imposed in March 2023 and added an additional five-year ban on international travel. Cambodian authorities should immediately quash the conviction and release Sokha from custody.
Sokha, 72, is the former president of the dissolved main opposition party, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP). Since the Cambodian authorities arrested Sokha in 2017, he has been arbitrarily detained, mistreated in custody, and banned from voting or running for election.
“The Cambodian government should drop this bogus prosecution of Kem Sokha, immediately release him, and unconditionally restore his political rights,” said Bryony Lau, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The commune elections in 2027 and national election in 2028 won’t have any legitimacy so long as the government is using the courts to unjustly punish political opponents.”
Phnom Penh police and members of then-Prime Minister Hun Sen’s personal bodyguard unit arrested Sokha on September 3, 2017. An investigating judge later charged Sokha with treason and “colluding with foreigners” under article 443 of the Cambodian criminal code, which carries a penalty of up to 30 years in prison.
Sokha was detained for more than a year in Correctional Center III prison in Tboung Khmum province following his arrest. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared Sokha’s pretrial detention “arbitrary” and “politically motivated” in June 2018 and urged Cambodian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release him. He was placed under de-facto house arrest in September 2018 where he remains.
Government prosecutors have sought to portray the CNRP’s democratic movement-building and Sokha’s leadership of human rights nongovernmental organizations and opposition parties as attempts to overthrow the government in collusion with foreign countries.
Sokha’s trial was delayed for years, with UN human rights experts noting that his trial “appears to have been artificially prolonged.” His conviction in March 2023 resulted in further restrictions on his freedom of movement and association, with the court barring him from contacting anyone except his relatives, either in person or online, without the prosecutors’ permission. Sokha’s appeal began in January 2024, but hearings were suspended in September that year without clear reason and only resumed in April 2026.
Following Sokha’s 2017 arrest, the government-controlled Supreme Court, led by a chief justice who was a member of the central committee of the ruling Cambodian People’s Party, ordered the CNRP dissolved in November 2017. Many senior party members fled into exile, fearing arrest. On July 29, 2018, the government organized elections in which there were no significant opposition parties or candidates. The ruling party won all 125 seats in the National Assembly, effectively turning Cambodia into a single-party state.
Since then, Cambodian authorities have continued to repress and harass the political opposition. Prosecutors opened mass trials in 2021 against other political opposition members, and defendants included more than 100 people connected to Sokha’s dissolved CNRP, as well as civil society activists.
Local elections held in 2022 were rife with numerous and significant irregularities in counting the votes, suggesting electoral fraud and vote tampering. The national election in 2023 was held amid a ban on the main current opposition party, the Candlelight Party. UN human rights experts said that the pre-election period was “extremely disconcerting,” adding that, “[i]t has affected the credibility of the entire electoral process.”
The longtime prime minister, Hun Sen, transferred the role of prime minister to his son, the former army commander Hun Manet, following the 2023 national elections. Hun Sen was appointed president of Cambodia’s Senate in April 2024 after Senate elections marred by threats and bribes. Under Hun Manet and Hun Sen, the Cambodian government has drastically curtailed rights, repressing civil and political space and other fundamental freedoms.
“Governments that have urged Cambodian authorities to free Kem Sokha for nearly a decade need to step up their response after this outrageous ruling,” Lau said. “Donor governments should be clear that they won’t provide any technical support for the upcoming elections until Cambodian authorities take steps to fully reopen the political space.”
EU Parliament Confirms That ‘Only Yes Means Yes’
The European Parliament adopted on Tuesday a resolution calling on the European Commission to make consent the determining factor in rape legislation across the EU, with 447 members voting “for,” 160 “against,” and 43 abstaining.
Stating that “affirmative, freely given and unambiguous indication of consent is valid and that silence, a lack of verbal or physical resistance or the absence of a ‘no’ cannot be interpreted as consent,” the resolution also highlights that “consent can be withdrawn at any time before or during a sexual act.”
The European Parliament also called on the European Union to take an intersectional, victim-centered approach, highlighting the need for improved services and support for survivors including sexual and reproductive health care, trauma care, psychological support, and access to safe abortions.
As of today, 17 of the 27 EU member states already have consent-based rape laws, with other member states still defining rape based on elements of “force,” “threat,” or “coercion.” Since 2023, several European countries such as France,Finland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands have adopted consent-based legislation, while Italy’s attempted legislative reform stalled.
The adoption of an EU-wide standard on the legal definition of rape with consent at the core would align with international standards, including the EU’s obligations under the Istanbul convention, which states that “consent must be given voluntarily as the result of the person’s free will assessed in the context of the surrounding circumstances.”
The United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, Dubravka Šimonović, highlighted in a 2021 report that governments should harmonize legislation with international standards, stating that a “[l]ack of consent by the victim should be at the center of all definitions of rape.” Globally, rapes are widely underreported; a key factor is “criminal justice systems which define rape based on the use of force,” the report said.
The EU member states who do not have consent-based definitions of rape in their domestic legislation do not need to wait to see if the European Commission proposes legislation, but instead can and should take immediate steps to amend their laws accordingly. It is past time to make clear that sex absent consent is rape.
Nepal: Transgender Rights Progress Stalls
(Berlin, April 30, 2026) – Nepali authorities have stopped processing applications for transgender people to change their legal gender on identity documents, regressing on years of progress and undermining the fundamental right of recognition before the law, Human Rights Watch said today. Policymakers in Nepal should reject attempts to undermine the fundamental rights of sexual and gender minorities.
Click to expand Image Participants prepare for the trans rights march in Kathmandu on December 10, 2022. © HRW 2022, Kyle KnightThe Nepali authorities’ recognition of trans people’s rights based on self-identification following a court ruling in 2007 garnered widespread praise and made the country an important global touchpoint for rights related to gender identity and expression. Despite this jurisprudence, and a range of implementation measures, national authorities never specified the process trans individuals should follow to change their legal gender, creating bureaucratic confusion and leaving those seeking recognition at the whim of local officials and social pressure campaigns.
“Nepal has a proud history of principled legal developments that protected the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and has played an important role on the global stage” said Alex Müller, LGBT Rights Director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should not allow disingenuous attacks to derail their work to uphold Nepal’s obligations under international human rights law.”
In December 2025, Human Rights watch interviewed 11 trans people in Nepal, over half of whom were in the midst of stalled legal gender recognition processes. This research followed the publication of a 2024 report, “‘We Have to Beg So Many People’: Human Rights Violations in Nepal’s Legal Gender Recognition Practices”, which called for the end of the use of medical examinations and the creation of a rights-based legal gender recognition policy.
While some trans people have been able to successfully change their legal gender through individual court cases, interactions between trans people and the state have been fraught for several years, Human Rights Watch found. Some officials demand medical certificates proving that individuals have undergone genital surgery, which is not and should not be required under Nepali law.
For some trans people, including those who had tried multiple times to change their legal gender to “other” in accordance with the 2007 Supreme Court judgment, the creeping medicalization established an additional hurdle. For others, it created a prohibitive barrier, leaving them in limbo as their documents undergo years-long processing.
Starting in early 2025, the situation worsened significantly following an increase in public and, apparently in private, “anti-gender” advocacy with authorities by groups opposed to rights-based trans legal recognition. In recent months the Ministry of Home Affairs paused all processing of applications, even in cases where applicants have received the support of district officials and courts, effectively ending legal gender recognition in the country.
Human Rights Watch wrote to the Ministry of Home Affairs on April 8, 2026, inquiring about the research findings that the legal gender recognition process had halted. At the time of publication, we had not received a response.
Trans people who cannot obtain documents that list their self-declared legal gender face extensive obstacles. People interviewed said that they faced problems accessing education, health care, and employment, and that they lived with the fear that at any moment, someone could come across their documents, realize they were trans, and mistreat them.
Human rights law, which has been influential in Nepali jurisprudence to date, holds that people have a right to be recognized before the law, and that there are specific protections for those who seek to change their legal gender.
Balen Shah, the new prime minister, should direct his government to immediately process pending applications and create a clear policy for legal gender recognition—the ability of transgender people to change their gender on legal documents—aligned with Nepal’s commitments under international human rights law.
“The Supreme Court made it clear in 2007 that trans people should be legally recognized based on their self-identification, and practices since then has indicated that this means as male, female, or other,” Müller said. “Trans people in Nepal are being abandoned by authorities who appear to be listening to anti-gender ideology talking points”
Impact of Inadequate Legal Gender Recognition Policy
As documented in the Human Rights Watch 2024 report, since 2007, various Nepali government offices have, in response to advocacy and individual applicants, erected a haphazard and para-official process for transgender people to change their legal gender. Some people have been able to obtain documents reading “third gender” or “other;” others have been denied entirely or told they must have surgery to be eligible.
A small number of people have been able to change their documents from “male” to “female,” but doing so invariably involves an invasive and humiliating physical exam in a medical setting, and an individual petition to the Home Affairs Ministry or a court. There is no law or policy in Nepal that mandates surgery for legal gender change. And there are no government-mandated processes to guide applicants seeking legal gender recognition, or the officials processing the applications.
Trans people’s experiences reveal that Nepal’s ad hoc processes have been often confusing, slow, and rife with human rights violations. Their names have been withheld in this report for their privacy.
Rashima K., a 31-year-old trans woman in Kathmandu, started her legal gender recognition process in 2022 at the district office in Jhapa but, three years later, had not received her documents. “I brought a medical certificate, which I got without an exam because my sister worked at the hospital, and the [chief district officer, CDO] denied me, saying the district court needed to make the decision,” she said. When Human Rights Watch spoke with her she was hoping to have a court hearing sometime in 2026.
Rashima said carrying a citizenship certificate that lists her as male causes a range of problems for her, in particular in running her business. “I import materials for my company, but every time I went to get them, I got turned away by customs because they said I was a fraud.” Her solution was to register the business in her brother’s name and send him to pick up all of the shipments. “It works, but it only works because I am lucky to have a supportive sibling; not everyone has that,” she said.
Aneesh L., a 31-year-old trans woman who is raising a child with her partner, said that while she underwent gender-affirming surgery in India in 2016, she had not pursued legal gender recognition until 2023. Once she began the process, she faced resistance from bureaucrats who invoked nonexistent requirements.
“The chief district officer demanded a medical certificate. I told him that wasn’t a requirement and he said yes, it was, so I went to Bir Hospital and got examined,” she said. “When I returned with the medical certificate, he said ‘well the media know about this issue now, so it has to be decided by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOHA), not me.’”
With help from advocacy groups, Aneesh submitted her application at the ministry in July 2025. Later that year, she said, she received a phone call telling her the process was being paused for all applicants. “The person who called me from MOHA said the reason they stopped the process is someone in the community told MOHA to stop the process because they said all trans women are biological males,” she said.
“My son’s school and our landlord keep asking for our documents, and we keep avoiding it in the hopes mine can say female soon so we cannot face discrimination, but the pressure is getting too high.” Aneesh said she is concerned that school officials or her landlord will cause problems for her if they discover she is transgender.
Ratika T., a 30-year-old trans woman, said that she had started the legal gender recognition process in 2022, been denied by the chef district officer in her home district, and then received a positive ruling from the district court. Still, even after the court order, the district officer directed her case to the Home Affairs Ministry. “I got my court ruling in June of 2025 and filed it immediately with my application to MOHA. Then I found out from a news story that MOHA was pausing all applications,” she said. She has not heard from the ministry since.
Living with a citizenship certificate that lists her as male has negatively affected Ratika’s ability to find formal employment throughout her adult life. She has trained for specific jobs only to be denied the job once she reaches the interview stage, during which she needs to furnish her legal documents to prove employment eligibility. Ratika said: “Once they get confirmation that I’m trans, they just seem to lose interest in me.”
Arbitrary, Inconsistent Requirements for Legal Gender Recognition
While the Supreme Court has continued to issue judgments in individual cases that were promising for rights-based legal gender recognition, the process of changing legal gender for trans people across the country has been inconsistent. Some people are able to make a few visits to government offices in their home district and successfully obtain new documents; others are coerced into medical procedures they may not want, and still face delays or denials of new documents.
Over time, authorities began requesting medical practitioners to “verify” the sex of trans people even though this process was never explicitly written in policy and does not have grounding in medical standards or international law.
Such a process that required the involvement of medical practitioners became quickly embedded, with activists publicly noting as early as 2013 that government officials were demanding letters from doctors for trans people to change their legal gender. By 2019, discussions around amending the citizenship law featured arguments for including a “medical proof” clause for legal gender change in the new law. While this informal requirement for “medical approval” is most consistently applied to people seeking binary legal recognition as male or female, Human Rights Watch documented accounts of people seeking third (or “other”) gender legal recognition also being asked by authorities for medical verification.
This creeping but arbitrary use of medical approval has created an ad hoc and harmful pathway to legal gender recognition in Nepal. It amounts to a para-official process in which trans people are subjected to the scrutiny of bureaucrats and physicians to “prove” they are transgender. This is antithetical to the Nepal Supreme Court’s orders, international human rights law, and international medical best practices, all of which uphold self-identification as a core tenet. And now, with the process completely halted by the Home Affairs Ministry, even those who subject themselves to invasive and unnecessary medical examinations for the sake of changing their documents are left in the lurch.
For everyone who was compelled to undergo a medical verification procedure, the new para-official procedure resulted in them being subjected to unnecessary, invasive, and humiliating intervention that violated their rights to privacy, health, and bodily autonomy. Human Rights Watch documented the experience of one trans woman who underwent this medical exam at Bir Hospital in 2023.
This separation of legal gender recognition from medical procedure also has been emphasized by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). The WPATH statement on Identity Recognition:
[R]ecognizes the right of all people to identity documents consistent with their gender identity, including those documents which confer legal gender status…. Transgender people, regardless of how they identify or appear, should enjoy the gender recognition all persons expect and deserve. Medical and other barriers to gender recognition for transgender individuals may harm physical and mental health. WPATH opposes all medical requirements that act as barriers to those wishing to change legal sex or gender markers on documents.
Discriminatory Pushback
The current pause on processing applications appears related to an increase in public and private “anti-gender” advocacy that has clouded Nepal’s once-strong reputation for good faith policy processes regarding protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression.
In February 2024, letters from a nongovernmental organization to the Home Affairs Ministry reviewed by Human Rights Watch, said that the organization had “received information that individuals assigned male at birth have submitted applications to obtain citizenship certificates identifying them as female, and that individuals assigned female at birth have submitted applications to obtain citizenship certificates identifying them as male.”
The group said that while people had been obtaining third gender documents marked “other” since 2012, they were concerned about a new group of trans people receiving documents that legally recognized them as male or female. The group claimed that allowing trans people to be recognized as male or female “has created confusion and inconsistency even among the authorities responsible for issuing citizenship certificates to members of the same community.”
On July 9, 2025, a news website, accused trans rights activists of being “foreign agents” and causing “chaos” because they were advocating legally recognizing trans women as women and trans men as men. These arguments being deployed against Nepal’s self-identification-based legal gender recognition practices echo growing “anti-gender” activism around the world.
First propagated by the Vatican in the 1990s, “anti-gender” arguments are based on “gender ideology,” a term used to refer to a supposed gay and feminist-led movement aiming to subvert traditional families and social values. Since then, it has developed into a catch-all phrase and shorthand for various anxieties about social change and gained significant traction.
As Human Rights Watch has analyzed globally, the term “gender ideology” has increasingly has become a hammer wielded variously to attack feminism, transgender equality, the existence of intersex bodies, the elimination of sex stereotyping, family law reform, same-sex marriage, access to abortion, contraception, and comprehensive sexuality education. Nepali policymakers should be wary of arguments that attempt to undermine human rights obligations.
If the authorities are listening to and acting on claims that brand trans activists who seek legal recognition as men or women as “creating confusion” and “foreign agents,” this will undermine Nepal’s progress toward rights-based legal recognition for all, Human Rights Watch said.
Nepal’s Obligations Under Domestic Law and International Standards
The Supreme Court has been an important venue for advancing the rights of transgender people in Nepal, starting from the 2007 judgment in Sunil Babu Pant and Others v. Nepal. This case concerned a petition asking the Supreme Court to recognize and protect the rights of LGBT people, including legal recognition of same-sex relationships. The court ruled that all individuals are entitled to dignity and equal protection regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. Among other orders, the court directed the government to issue identity documents reflecting individuals’ self-identified gender.
In filing the case in 2006, LGBT rights activists exercised a new and important tool: the Yogyakarta Principles. These principles—formally the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity—had just been published. The Yogyakarta Principles, are an interpretation of international human rights law as it applies to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics.
The Yogyakarta Principles—compiled by a group of experts, including Nepali LGBT rights activist and former member of parliament Sunil Babu Pant—state that each person’s self-defined sexual orientation and gender identity is “integral to their personality” and is a basic aspect of identity, personal autonomy, dignity, and freedom. The principles are clear that gender recognition may involve, “if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means.” Put simply, the process for legal recognition should be separate from any medical interventions. But if an individual’s personal transition process requires medical support, those services should be available and accessible.
Pant and his co-litigants petitioned the Supreme Court to recognize the Yogyakarta Principles in Nepali law. The Nepali Supreme Court’s final judgment required the government to legally recognize a third gender category based on the self-identification of the individual, audit all laws to identify those that discriminated against LGBT people, and form a committee to study legal recognition of same-sex relationships.
Within weeks of the ruling, Richard Bennett, the representative of the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Nepal at the time, called the judgment “truly a ground-breaking decision on gender identity and sexual orientation in South Asia and perhaps worldwide.” Courts in the United States and India, as well as the European Court of Human Rights, have cited Pant v. Nepal (2007) in their consideration of comparative law on how to recognize transgender people’s rights.
In 2011, Nepal became the first country to include a third gender option on its federal census. And in 2015, the government started issuing passports that recognized three genders. That same year, Nepal became the world’s tenth country to specifically protect LGBT people in its constitution.
While the 2007 judgment relied heavily on international law and examples from around the world, later jurisprudence could more exclusively analyze the Nepali context and developments that had taken place domestically.
In a 2023 case, Pokhrel v Nepal, the court explained important details about terminology related to sexual orientation and gender identity in Nepal, while acknowledging that a range of identities may be understood under a “third gender” heading and some people may pursue legal recognition as “third gender,” others may identify as male, female, or a range of indigenous identity terms.
The court wrote: “Generally speaking, the term ‘third gender’ is used to indicate communities other than men and women. In several documents, the use of ‘third gender’ also refers to the transgender community. Given the current context where various terms of gender identity have been developed and individuals are openly identifying themselves with those identities, ‘third gender’ cannot denote everyone and, therefore, the use of such a term can potentially diminish the identity of the members of the gender and sexual minority community as a whole.”
A critical component of evolving international standards on transgender people’s rights—and states’ implementation of those standards—has been the clear separation of medical procedures related to gender transition, and legal procedures related to gender recognition.
Such developments have resonated globally and provided important citations in jurisprudence around the world. Nonetheless, and especially since 2025 with the suspension of legal gender recognition, Nepal continues to fall short of its international human rights obligations.
US Court Upholds Right to Seek Asylum
A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected on April 24 the government’s denial of the right to seek asylum for asylum seekers who arrive at the southern border. The ruling stops summary deportations based on President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day proclamation of an “invasion” at the US-Mexico border.
The court held that US immigration law “makes plain that the right to apply for asylum is broadly available to all foreign individuals present or arriving in the United States unless expressly restricted from applying.”
Last year, I traveled to Panama and Costa Rica to meet scores of asylum seekers from a Who’s Who of refugee-producing countries, including Russia, Iran, China, Afghanistan, and Cameroon. All arrived after Trump’s inauguration with the intent of seeking asylum; all were flatly denied that opportunity and were instead detained incommunicado, cuffed and chained, loaded onto planes, and dumped into countries with which they had no connections whatsoever.
None of the people I interviewed, including those who gave harrowing accounts of persecution in their home countries, had the opportunity to apply for asylum. To implement Trump’s proclamation, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued guidance saying that individuals “who cross between the ports of entry on the southern land border” are “not permitted to apply for asylum.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
“I asked for asylum repeatedly… Nobody listened to me,” Mina, a 27-year-old Iranian woman who had converted to Christianity, told Human Rights Watch. “I didn’t understand why they didn’t listen to me. Then an immigration officer told me President Trump had ended asylum, so they were going to deport us.”
The court has now ordered the DHS to stop deporting people like Mina, although the courts have so far not ruled that Mina and others like her who were denied access to the asylum process and wrongfully deported should be allowed to come back to apply for asylum.
But going forward, the court’s message to DHS officials is clear: US immigration law “does not allow the President to remove Plaintiffs under summary removal procedures of his own making. Nor does it allow the Executive to suspend Plaintiffs’ right to apply for asylum.”
FIFA: New Rule Recognizes Afghan Women’s Team
(Vancouver) – The FIFA Council’s decision to approve amendments to its Governance Regulations provides a landmark opportunity to ensure gender equity and human rights in sport, the Sport & Rights Alliance (SRA) said today. These changes allow for the official recognition of the Afghanistan Women’s National Team in exile, ensuring that the players can once again represent their country in official FIFA competitions.
“For five years, we were told the Afghanistan Women’s National Team could never compete again because the men who took our country would not allow it,” said Khalida Popal, founder and director of Girl Power, and former captain and cofounder of the Afghanistan Women’s National Team. “I am extremely proud of this decision by FIFA and glad that our collective advocacy has not only changed the future for Afghan women, but also ensured that no other national team has to sacrifice what our players did. This is the rebirth of hope and a strong message to those who try to erase women from society: you will not succeed. Women belong on the pitch, in public life, and everywhere decisions are made.”
The decision, approved on April 29, 2026, at the FIFA Council, grants FIFA the authority, in consultation with the relevant confederation, to register national teams for official competitions when their home member association is “unable to do so.”
“This FIFA decision is critical to ensuring every Member Association upholds their responsibilities toward gender equity and human rights,” said Andrea Florence, executive director of the Sport & Rights Alliance. “This is about more than just football: it’s about sending a message that no government should have the power to erase women from public life. We are thrilled that FIFA has listened to Afghan women and addressed this gap in their statutes. We look forward to cheering them on for years to come.”
After the Taliban took over Afghanistan in August 2021 and subsequently banned all women and girls from sport, the Afghanistan Women’s National Team has lived and trained in exile, scattered among Albania, Australia, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Despite their demonstrated resilience, the team members were blocked from official competitions because FIFA rules required the approval of the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan Football Federation. The new amendment effectively ends this requirement.
“FIFA has finally done the right thing by closing the loophole that allowed the Taliban’s discriminatory policies to be enforced on the global stage,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “FIFA’s action should serve as a model for how international sports bodies should respond when athletes are systemically excluded because of their gender, ethnicity, or beliefs.”
In a pivotal report published in March 2025, “It's Not Just a Game: It's Part of Who I Am,” the Sport & Rights Alliance outlined the Afghanistan Women’s National Team’s case for recognition, noting that the continued exclusion of the team represented a breach of FIFA’s nondiscrimination and gender equity mandates. FIFA’s subsequent formation of the Afghan Women United refugee team provided a partial solution, but the decision opens the pathway to grant the players full status and participation as a national squad.
“Afghan women have been punished twice: once by the Taliban who drove them from their homes, and again by global sports bodies that let them fall through the cracks,” said Steve Cockburn, head of economic and social justice at Amnesty International. “Official recognition of the women’s football team will represent a step toward justice for all Afghan women, and proof of what can be achieved when the international community refuses to look away.”
The Sport & Rights Alliance extends its deepest gratitude to all the players, fans, coaches, and activists worldwide whose tireless advocacy made this day possible. This victory belongs to the players, but its impact will be felt far beyond the pitch, setting a definitive precedent that women and girls belong in sport, and everywhere they choose to be.
Quotes from Players:
“For the last few years, we have played under many names—as refugees, as ‘Afghan Women United,’ and as guests of other clubs—but in our hearts, we were always the National Team. To hopefully be able to wear our flag again officially is a feeling I cannot describe.”
–Nazia Ali, Afghan Women United, Australia
“This achievement today honours the long and painful journey we have taken as Afghan women footballers, fighting discrimination, abuse, and harassment simply for the right to play the sport we love. Many of us have made enormous sacrifices, losing our homes, our country, our careers, and precious years of our footballing lives in the struggle for dignity and freedom. Yet we refused to give up. Today is not only about recognition; it is about securing our future. This team will no longer be a temporary or symbolic project: it will be permanent. Through our resilience and the sacrifices of so many players, we are sending a clear message to the world: Afghan women are here to stay.”
–Sevin Azimi, Afghan Women United, United Kingdom
“Today, the Taliban’s power no longer extends to the world of international football. It is not the end of gender apartheid in our country, but it is a sign that the fight is not over. When we take the pitch again as the Afghanistan Women’s National Team, we are sending a message to our sisters that we are with them, and that nothing is impossible.”
–Maryam Karimyar, Afghan Women United, Portugal
US: Allow Those With Felony Convictions to Vote
(New York) – Legislation advancing in Maryland and Alabama would expand voting rights for people with felony convictions, marking significant progress in the movement to expand voting rights for all, Human Rights Watch said today. Alabama recently enacted a law to make it easier for people to vote after they complete prison sentences. Maryland Governor Wes Moore should sign HB115 into law, and other states should follow their lead.
In Maryland, HB115 would automatically register people to vote as they are leaving prison, removing a significant barrier that has kept eligible voters off the rolls for years. Alabama’s Senate Bill 24, recently signed by the governor, requires the Board of Pardons and Paroles to provide “easily accessible” information regarding the restoration process to people who have completed their sentences. It also requires the board to inform the secretary of state when individual rights are restored to add them to the voter rolls. The bill’s passage marks significant progress for the state, where 1 in 10 Black adults are disenfranchised because of criminal convictions.
“These bills are hard-won victories by advocates and directly affected people who have worked for years to expand the right to vote in these states,” said Trey Walk, democracy researcher and advocate at Human Rights Watch. “The United States should live up to its democratic ideals by offering the right to vote without regard to a person’s experience with the criminal legal system.”
These reforms come at the same time as the Trump administration has taken steps that could make it more difficult to vote. The administration has sought to impose new restrictions on vote-by-mail, which millions of voters, including people with disabilities, rely on.
In October 2025, the US Supreme Court heard arguments in Louisiana v. Callais, which asks whether creating majority-Black congressional districts, to comply with Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, violates the US Constitution. That case, which will be decided in the coming months, has drawn serious alarm from racial justice and voting rights advocates.
“With sustained attacks on federal voting rights protections, it is critical for state legislatures to take up the mantle,” Walk said. “They should not only defend but expand access to the ballot.”
The United States remains out of step with prevailing global practices in disenfranchising large numbers of people based on criminal convictions, with felony disenfranchisement affecting over four million people.
This impact is highly racialized. The Sentencing Project estimated in 2024 that 1 in 22 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, more than 3 times the rate of people who are not Black. According to the same study, at least 495,000 US Latines, or 1.5 percent of the voting-eligible population, are disenfranchised.
More work will remain even if both bills become law, Human Rights Watch said. Alabama’s bill in particular would retain the state’s practice of requiring people on felony parole or probation to pay court fees, fines, and other costs before their voting rights can be restored. This kind of “pay-to-vote” requirement disproportionately keeps low-income people off the voting rolls.
Globally, most countries with populations of 1.5 million or more never, or rarely, deny the right to vote because of a criminal conviction. The reforms in states like Maryland and Alabama move the United States closer to this international norm.
The right to vote is protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which the United States ratified in 1992. The United Nations Human Rights Committee holds that any restrictions on voting rights must be “objective and reasonable” and that the length of any suspension of voting rights based on a conviction should be proportionate to the offense and the sentence.
In 2024, Human Rights Watch, along with the Sentencing Project and the American Civil Liberties Union, released “Out of Step: U.S. Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective,” a report examining state and federal policies regarding felony disenfranchisement. The groups recommended that the United States should end felony disenfranchisement, eliminate “pay-to-vote” practices, establish polling centers in correctional facilities, and require officials to notify all eligible voters of their rights.
“Every state should be working to tear down unnecessary barriers to voting,” Walk said. “Voting is a human right that protects everyone.”
Israel Bankrolls War Crimes in Occupied Syrian Golan
(Beirut) – The Israeli government has approved a $334 million plan to transfer thousands more Israeli civilians into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, Human Rights Watch said today. The decision, adopted by the cabinet on April 17, 2026, is a clear statement of intent to commit war crimes.
“Israel's cabinet has put public money behind a war crime in Syria at the same time as it is turbocharging settlement expansion in the West Bank alongside continued impunity for violence against Palestinians there,” said Hiba Zayadin, senior Syria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “A permanent population transfer into Syrian territory violates international norms with grave implications for long-displaced Syrians.”
The European Union and its member states, the United Kingdom, and other countries with leverage should respond by suspending their trade deals with Israel and adopting a ban on trade and business with illegal Israeli settlements, applying to the occupied Golan Heights as well as the West Bank. Countries should also suspend arms transfers to Israel. Where national laws allow, prosecutors in third countries should open criminal investigations under the principle of universal jurisdiction against Israeli officials and others credibly implicated in the transfer of civilians into occupied territory.
The cabinet approved the plan to develop the settlement of Katzrin, founded in 1977, into what officials described as the Golan’s “first city,” with the stated goal of bringing 3,000 new Israeli settler families to the occupied territory by 2030.
The plan funds infrastructure, housing, public services, and academic facilities in Katzrin, including a new university branch and specialized medical facilities. The Directorate of Tnufa for the North, an Israeli government agency founded in 2024 to facilitate the rebuilding and development of northern areas of Israel affected by hostilities since 2023, will oversee the project coordination with local authorities.
As Human Rights Watch has previously documented in the context of settlements in the occupied West Bank, businesses that contribute to the transfer of civilians into occupied territory, including by building or servicing settlements, risk complicity in violations of international humanitarian law and associated war crimes. Companies doing business with or in the occupied Golan Heights face the same risk.
Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967 and extended Israeli laws into it in 1981, a de facto annexation, but the United States is the only country in the world that recognizes Israel’s purported annexation of the territory. The Golan Heights remains occupied territory under international law.
Since 1967, Israeli authorities have barred the displaced Syrians, who retain the right to return, from returning to their homes in the occupied Golan Heights and destroyed hundreds of Syrian villages and farms in the territory. According to the Syrian government, those displaced, including their descendants, now number in the hundreds of thousands.
United Nations Security Council Resolution 497 declared Israeli authorities’ annexation null and void and without international legal effect, stating that the Fourth Geneva Convention continued to apply to the occupied territory. The UN General Assembly has reinforced this point in annual resolutions, most recently in December 2025. The transfer by an occupying power of parts of its civilian population into occupied territory is prohibited under article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime.
The Syrian government should build on initial steps to address serious international crimes committed in Syria both during the Assad era and since, including the establishment of a national transitional justice commission to put in place legal frameworks for domestic investigations and prosecution, Human Rights Watch said.
International accountability options are also available. Despite public meetings between the Syrian government and International Criminal Court (ICC) officials following the December 2024 fall of Bashar al-Assad, Syria is not currently a state party to the ICC’s Rome Statute. Syrian transitional authorities could open a pathway to international accountability by acceding to the statute and by lodging a declaration under article 12(3) accepting the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on Syrian territory, including those committed prior to the date of accession.
The April 17 plan comes as the Israeli military has expanded further into southern Syria. Since the fall of the Assad government, Israeli forces have occupied Syrian territory beyond the 1974 disengagement line, established multiple military positions inside Syria, and carried out frequent ground raids, airstrikes, and other operations in Quneitra, Daraa, and Sweida governorates.
Human Rights Watch has documented serious abuses by the Israeli military during these operations, including the forced displacement of Syrian residents from villages in the newly occupied area, which is a war crime. Soldiers entered villages near the separation line, held families at gunpoint for hours, and forced residents out without allowing them to take their belongings or make any arrangements for shelter, safety, or return. In some villages, Israeli bulldozers later razed homes overnight, uprooting the orchards and gardens around them.
Israeli forces have constructed fixed military installations adjacent to the affected villages and indicated they intend to remain indefinitely, making meaningful return effectively impossible. They have also fenced off farmland, grazing pastures, and water sources, cutting families off from generations-old livelihoods, and razed large portions of village forest reserves. Israeli forces have also arbitrarily detained Syrian civilians and transferred them into Israel, where they are held without charge and incommunicado.
Israel has simultaneously been accelerating expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank amid a growing wave of settler violence. Earlier in April, the Israeli cabinet approved the construction of 34 new settlements, the largest single approval of settlements to date. The current government has approved 102 new settlements since it took office in 2022, increasing the total number of illegal settlements by 80 percent, from 127 to 229.
Israeli officials are increasingly explicit that one of the goals of illegal settlement is to erase any possibility of a Palestinian state. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler attacks now account for 75 percent of all displacements recorded in 2026. The ICC has an ongoing investigation into crimes committed in Palestine.
A similar pattern of mass displacement is unfolding in Lebanon. Hundreds of thousands of people remain displaced following multiple Israeli displacement orders for southern Lebanon beginning in March 2026, and Israeli forces continue to occupy dozens of villages along the border. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated on March 16 that Shia residents of southern Lebanon will be prevented from returning for an indefinite period, which Human Rights Watch has found suggests an intent to forcibly displace the civilian population based on religion.
The EU and its member states continue to recognize the Syrian Golan Heights as occupied territory, consistent with Resolution 497 and the EU’s longstanding position. In June 2025, an EU review found indications that Israel was in breach of article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which makes respect for human rights an essential element of the agreement.
The European Commission proposed the suspension of trade-related provisions in September 2025, but that has not happened. Despite the International Court of Justice’s 2024 ruling, the EU also continues to trade with Israel’s illegal settlements, with only Spain having introduced a ban.
“The EU has powerful tools at its disposal but refuses to use them,” Zayadin said. “The US denies the reality that the Golan is occupied Syrian territory. Israel’s April 17 plan is the predictable result when an occupying power is confident that its impunity will hold. Syrian authorities can change the calculus by taking steps on national justice and joining the ICC.”
Saudi Arabia: Halt Imminent Executions of Ethiopian Migrants
(Beirut) – At least 65 Ethiopian migrants are at imminent risk of execution in Saudi Arabia for drug-related offenses, Human Rights Watch said today. Saudi authorities executed three others on April 21, 2026.
“Saudi Arabia’s willingness to execute foreign migrants for nonviolent offences following trials that denied them basic due process reflects a profound disregard for their rights and lives,” said Nadia Hardman, senior refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi Arabia’s partners should urgently intervene before it is too late.”
Human Rights Watch interviewed three informed sources about the cases of three men held in the Khamis Mushait detention facility in the Asir region of Saudi Arabia. The sources said that all three explained they were refugees, having fled the 2020-2022 armed conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where the humanitarian situation remains dire.
The sources said that the three men used the dangerous migration route across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen, and into Saudi Arabia to seek work. They said the men felt compelled to carry khat, a mild stimulant plant native to parts of East Africa, to make money for the journey and to survive. In at least one case, the sources said, a smuggler forced a man to carry the plant from Yemen into Saudi Arabia as a condition of facilitating his journey.
Cathinone, the active ingredient in khat, is banned in Saudi Arabia but legally permissible and culturally consumed in parts of Ethiopia, as well as in Yemen. The sources said that none of the men knew that carrying khat into and within Saudi Arabia was illegal.
The sources said that Saudi security authorities intercepted and arrested the three men between 2023 and 2024, in the Abaha region, while they were working, and transferred them to various detention facilities, and finally to Khamis Mushait. The sources indicated the men had two or three extremely brief group court hearings, some by video link. The men had no legal representation or translators, and none were told the charges against them.
The sources said that security officials beat the men during the hearings and forced them to sign documents they did not understand. A translator appeared only in the final court hearing, solely to inform them that they had been found guilty of drug smuggling and were being sentenced to death. The sources quoted the judge as saying. “You will be an example to others.”
The men have been held inside Khamis Mushait for over two years with no opportunity to appeal. They have no set execution date, but they are among approximately 65 other Ethiopian men inside their cell all sentenced to death for drug-related offenses, as well as Saudi men held for murder and other serious crimes. The sources indicated the men believe hundreds of other Ethiopians are in other cells. Media have reported that over 200 Ethiopian men are awaiting the death penalty in Khamis Mushait. Human Rights Watch cannot verify this number.
On April 21, informed sources said, Saudi prison guards took three fellow detainees from their cell and told them they were going to a court hearing. Prison guards later told the remaining detainees that the three men had been executed, and they should inform their family members, creating panic among the others. The detainees have not received any visitors since the start of their detention and have not had any communication with Ethiopian consular officials.
The informed sources quoted one man as saying: “Last week, three of our friends were killed, maybe today or the day after tomorrow they [Saudi security officials] can kill me. Please help us.”
On April 21, the Ministry of Interior issued a statement announcing the executions of three Ethiopian nationals for “participating in smuggling hashish” into Saudi Arabia.
Saudi authorities have twice set a new record for the highest number of executions in one year since monitoring began, with 345 executions in 2024 and 356 in 2025. Executions of foreign nationals for nonlethal drug crimes drove the surge in executions in 2025.
Saudi Arabia has executed more than 2,000 people since King Salman bin Abdulaziz took the throne on January 23, 2015, and appointed his son Mohammed bin Salman crown prince on June 21, 2017. Despite a 2018 pledge by the crown prince to significantly curtail the use of the death penalty, executions have accelerated, including the execution of child defendants, disproportionate executions of foreign nationals, and politically motivated executions of people exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty. Saudi Arabia’s use of the death penalty is contrary to international human rights law, which upholds every human being’s “inherent right to life” and limits the death penalty to “the most serious crimes,” typically crimes resulting in death or serious bodily harm.
In 2025, nonlethal drug-related offenses account for approximately 68 percent of the total executions. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention condemned Saudi Arabia’s practice, finding that executions for drug-related offences are incompatible with international human rights law and fall outside the scope of the “most serious crimes.” The working group urged Saudi authorities to reinstate a moratorium and emphasized that imposing the death penalty for such offenses constitutes a clear violation of international legal standards.
Hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians live and work in Saudi Arabia. While many migrate for economic reasons, many have fled serious human rights abuses by their government, including during the recent, brutal armed conflict in northern Ethiopia. Human Rights Watch has for years documented a wide range of human rights abuses against migrants taking the same route.
The detention of migrants in deplorable facilities in Saudi Arabia is a longstanding problem which Human Rights Watch has found amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment. In 2023, Human Rights Watch found that Saudi border guards had killed at least hundreds of Ethiopian migrants and asylum seekers who tried to cross the Yemen-Saudi border, which, if committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, would be a crime against humanity.
Saudi Arabia should immediately cancel the death penalty for Ethiopian migrants and review all sentences in line with Saudi Arabia’s international obligations, including the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the UN Convention against Torture.
The Ethiopian Foreign Affairs Ministry and its representatives in Saudi Arabia should urgently intervene with their Saudi counterparts and at a minimum ensure that their nationals receive immediate consular assistance. Saudi Arabia should ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and establish asylum procedures consistent with international standard.
Concerned governments should use their leverage to press Saudi Arabia to abolish the death penalty or, at the very least, to reinstate a moratorium on executions for drug-related offences.
“Saudi Arabia’s extensive use of the death penalty is intertwined with fundamental and systemic violations of defendants’ rights to due process and a fair trial,” Hardman said. “The death sentences should be commuted and the death penalty abolished.”
Burkina Faso’s Dubious Military Reserve Plan
Burkina Faso’s Council of Ministers adopted a draft law on April 24 to create a 100,000-strong military reserve by the end of 2026. Defense Minister Célestin Simporé framed the move as a way to rapidly mobilize citizens to respond to security threats and “embed Patriotic Defense within a logic of citizen participation.”
On face value, adding tens of thousands of soldiers would appear to bolster national security, but in Burkina Faso it also risks accelerating an already serious human rights crisis.
Burkina Faso’s military already relies on tens of thousands of civilian auxiliaries known as the Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (Volontaires pour la défense de la patrie, VDPs). In several reports, Human Rights Watch has documented how VDPs have committed numerous grave abuses, including summary executions, looting, and forced displacement of minority communities.
Expanding this model risks replicating and multiplying these harms.
The proposed reserve would include both experienced military personnel and newly trained civilians. Yet the massive scale and short timeline raise concerns about the nature and duration of the training to realistically deliver a rights-respecting military reserve.
There are also questions about oversight. The current environment in Burkina Faso, marked by widespread and systematic rights violations by armed forces personnel and VDPs as well as the government’s recent suspension of organizations that provided training on human rights, casts serious doubt on the junta’s ability to curb abuses by the new force.
Unless carefully managed, recruiting and arming civilians to be reservists can blur the line between combatants and noncombatants, heightening risks for the wider population. Human Rights Watch has documented that communities hosting VDPs become more vulnerable to attacks by Islamist armed groups, which often treat these communities as if they were genuine military targets.
The junta should learn the lessons of the disastrous VDP program. Islamist armed groups have thrived not only on battlefield gains but on governance vacuums, local grievances, and the erosion of state trust. Expanding poorly trained forces does little to address these problems and may aggravate them by increasing abuses.
Burkina Faso faces grave security threats. But a strategy that threatens rather than improves the protection of civilians risks undermining both human rights and national security.
2026 World Cup: Tournament Will Kick Off in Climate of Fear
(Berlin) – The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup is unfolding against a backdrop of abusive immigration enforcement in the United States, new threats to media freedom, discrimination, and unmet human rights commitments by FIFA and host cities, Human Rights Watch said today, releasing a “Reporters’ Guide” for journalists covering the tournament. The tournament will open on June 11, 2026, across 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico, and the US.
The 79-page “Reporters’ Guide for the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico, and the United States” summarizes Human Rights Watch findings on human rights conditions across all three host countries and the particular risks that the US government’s policies pose to journalists, fans, players, and immigrant communities. The guide describes FIFA’s weak response to the human rights risks posed by the US President Donald Trump administration’s abuse of immigrants and its failure to meet its human rights commitments for the tournament.
“This was supposed to be the first-ever World Cup with a human rights framework: key protections for workers, fans, players, and communities,” said Minky Worden, director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch. “Instead, the US administration’s brutal immigration crackdown, discriminatory policies, and threats to press freedom mean the tournament risks being defined by exclusion and fear.”
The US will host the vast majority of World Cup matches, 78, including the semi-finals and final. Since taking office in January 2025, Donald Trump has rolled out abusive policies and actions targeting immigrants, protesters, human rights defenders, transgender people, and civil society. Fans from dozens of countries face visa bans.
People from immigrant communities who gather in stadiums or fan zones to celebrate their national teams and heritage may be at heightened risk of abuse. Also at risk are people that officers perceive as immigrants based on their skin color, spoken language, or place of work. From January 20, 2025, to March 10, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested at least 167,000 people in and around the 11 US cities where games will be played, based on ICE data provided in response to a freedom of information request to the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by Human Rights Watch.
Media freedom in the US is also under intense new pressure. Concerning cases include the arrest and detention of Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist, in Atlanta, a World Cup city, in June 2025. He was arrested reportedly for filming a political protest, transferred to ICE custody, and deported to El Salvador. In March 2026, Estefany Rodríguez, a journalist who had been covering ICE immigration raids, was reportedly arrested without her captors presenting a warrant. Human Rights Watch has documented that US officers have fired tear gas, pepper balls, hard foam rounds, and flash-bang grenades directly at protesters, journalists, and other observers, often at close range and often without sufficient warning or provocation.
FIFA has done little to respond to these risks. All but one of the World Cup host city committees have failed to present the human rights action plans FIFA promised ahead of the tournament or have produced plans that ignore or fail to adequately address risks, including those faced by immigrants, LGBT people, and journalists.
FIFA itself has not made meaningful efforts to use its leverage to push the Trump administration to roll back or pause abusive policies. Instead, in December 2025, it awarded Trump the first FIFA Peace Prize. Human Rights Watch has urged FIFA to work to convince the Trump administration to establish an “ICE Truce,” that includes a public guarantee from federal authorities to refrain from immigration enforcement operations at games and venues.
“The 2026 World Cup risks becoming a sportswashing bonanza for the Trump administration,” Worden said. “FIFA needs to take more effective steps to protect athletes, fans, and workers from the US government’s abusive policies.”
The 2026 World Cup is the first to span three countries, creating unprecedented logistical challenges for the media professionals expected to cover it. Journalists will be crossing international borders with different immigration regimes, visa requirements, and media freedom environments, in some cases multiple times over the course of the tournament.
Mexico remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for the media. The press freedom organization Article 19 reported that seven journalists were killed in Mexico in 2025. Impunity for such killings remains the norm. Its Congress passed a law in 2025 that grants the authorities virtually unlimited power to access information about citizens without judicial authorization, affecting media freedom. FIFA has not addressed direct risks to journalists working in Mexico’s World Cup host cities, including reporters covering possible intersections between soccer/football and organized crime.
Human Rights Watch wrote to FIFA President Gianni Infantino on April 6 with detailed questions about media freedom protections, including whether FIFA has established protocols to respond if journalists are detained, deported, or denied entry, and whether FIFA will commit to holding regular conferences open to all media throughout the tournament.
FIFA responded that it “has in place mechanisms and procedures to respond to any human rights or safeguarding-related incident, including those involving journalists.”
“Journalists covering this World Cup will have no shortage of stories, if they can access the tournament and if they can report freely,” Worden said. “The ‘Reporters’ Guide’ is designed to make sure media have what they need to cover not just the matches, but everything happening outside the stadium walls.”
Homophobia Taints Criminal Prosecutions in Kazakhstan
On April 22, courts in Kazakhstan delivered guilty verdicts in two unrelated criminal cases. Though the cases are distinct, they share commonalities: both defendants are outspoken advocates for the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) people in Kazakhstan and how the authorities handled each case raises concerns that homophobia and retaliation were factors in the defendants’ treatment and prosecution.
Zhanar Sekerbaeva, cofounder of the feminist group Feminita, was found guilty of “battery” and fined 173,000 Tenge (approximately USD$380). In November 2025, a group of people aggressively disrupted a gathering Sekerbaeva was attending with colleagues and friends at a café. In the aftermath, authorities detained and criminally prosecuted Sekerbaeva but did not pursue those who accosted the group, including by shouting anti-LGBT slurs and filming them without their consent.
Meanwhile, another court convicted Amir Shaikezhanov, an openly gay activist and the owner of a popular gay bar in Almaty, of rape and sentenced him to five years in prison. Shaikezhanov acknowledged the sexual encounter at issue, which occurred in March 2025, but denied the rape charges. The landlord of Shaikezhanov’s bar terminated the lease after his arrest, forcing the bar’s closure.
Following Shaikezhanov’s arrest, however, his treatment in custody raises concerns. Security services initially interrogated Shaikezhanov about his LGBT rights activism. While in pretrial detention for 10 months, another detainee apparently recognized him and disclosed his sexual orientation to others. In February 2026, a court clerk disclosed his HIV status. Authorities moved Shaikezhanov to solitary confinement, ostensibly to protect him from abuse and threats from other detainees, but which isolated him further and affected his mental health. Shaikezhanov’s lawyer requested bail for him half a dozen times, but her petitions were rejected.
These convictions come at a time of increasing hostility toward LGBT people in Kazakhstan and follow the adoption of an openly discriminatory anti-LGBT “propaganda” law that came into effect in March and which bans any materials authorities consider “propaganda of nontraditional sexual orientation.”
Kazakh authorities are responsible for ensuring the right to a fair trial, regardless of defendants’ sexual orientation or peaceful activism, and for ensuring that homophobia in the criminal justice system does not lead to violations of defendants’ rights.
Environmental Activist’s Detention Undermines Türkiye’s Role as COP31 Co-host
The first hearing in the trial of a Turkish environmental activist, who faces charges stemming from a peaceful protest against new coal mining near her home, will begin on April 27. Meanwhile, the court is holding her in detention to prevent her from protesting.
Click to expand Image Environmental activist Esra Isik, with her parents. © 2026 PrivateThe detained activist, 26-year-old Esra Işık, has been campaigning against a controversial 2019 government decision to cut down olive groves near her family’s home in Muğla, Western Türkiye, to make way for coal mining. Her detention, and that of two others who condemned her arrest, raises concerns about whether Türkiye will fulfill its responsibilities as co-host of the United Nations climate summit, known as COP31, scheduled for November.
After her March 30 arrest, a court ordered Işık be held in pretrial detention, citing a risk that she would protest visits by the court-appointed experts to the contested land—which is subject to an urgent expropriation process—and unduly exert pressure on them. Such a preemptive jailing for a potential intent to protest is not lawful under Turkish or international law.
Başaran Aksu, a trade unionist from the mining union Maden-İş, and Doğukan Akan, a trainee lawyer, were briefly detained earlier this month and are under criminal investigation for social media posts protesting Işık’s detention. They face potential charges of publicly disseminating misleading information.
The public prosecutor accuses Işık of “insulting” and “resisting the orders of a public official,” for which the faces up to seven years’ imprisonment. Her case exemplifies the official hostility toward peaceful environmental activism, in breach of Türkiye’s human rights obligations and incompatible with its duties as a COP31 co-host.
Türkiye's detention of Işık for protesting coal mining, and the others for social media posts that fall squarely within the bounds of free speech, raises serious questions about the likelihood of it respecting those rights during COP31. How Türkiye treats its environmental defenders at home will determine whether it can meaningfully fulfill its duties as COP31 co-host. As a co-host, Türkiye should ensure that civil society and environmental defenders can meaningfully participate in the meeting alongside government officials, experts, journalists, and business representatives.
Turkish authorities should protect environmental defenders’ rights and stop criminalizing their right to peaceful protest and freedom of expression. Releasing Işık from detention at her first trial hearing next week and dropping charges against her and the other two would be a good start.
Taliban Restrictions Haunt Afghan Women Outside Afghanistan
While corresponding with a local journalist in Afghanistan around a recent report I had authored, I received a shocking request: “Can we please have a video clip on your new report—not from you, but from a man from Human Rights Watch?”
I reread the message in anger. Although I was the report’s author as Human Rights Watch’s Afghanistan researcher, the outlet wanted a male colleague to speak in my place. Sadly, the reason behind the request is something many Afghan women around the world experience on a daily basis.
I eventually learned the media outlet had been instructed by the Taliban’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) that any Afghan woman, no matter where she lives, must appear in a full hijab with her face covered when speaking on air.
Rather than being treated as an expert on the country, I had been, like all women in Afghanistan, reduced to that identity alone and therefore could only speak in the media under conditions set by the Taliban. The implication was clear: being a woman from Afghanistan was enough to justify silencing me, even outside the country.
Nearly five years after the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, little if any meaningful freedom of expression survives inside the country, particularly for women. Afghan women are barred from education beyond sixth grade and face severe restrictions in employment and erasure from public life. In some provinces, female journalists cannot work and women's voices are banned from radio and TV.
This incident is also an example of how far the Taliban’s reach extends. Their system of repression does not stop at Afghanistan’s borders as they attempt to control and silence Afghan women abroad through demands that media outlets enforce their abusive rules on those who speak out and challenge Taliban abuses.
As an Afghan woman and Human Rights Watch researcher, I will not comply with the Taliban’s restrictive rules. But its repressive instructions to media outlets have serious implications for Afghan women’s right to freedom of expression, both inside and outside the country. Afghan women should not have to submit to discriminatory rules to exercise a right to speak publicly. Wherever we are, our voices matter.
Hungary’s Road Back to the Rule of Law Runs through the ICC
At his first international press conference, Hungary’s prime minister-elect Péter Magyar pledged to reverse his country’s move to leave the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Magyar won a landslide victory in Hungary’s April 12 election, where he campaigned, among other things, on restoring rule of law and ties with the EU, opposing former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Today, ICC membership is required of EU candidate countries in order to accede to the EU which has made legally binding commitments to promote and protect the court. Magyar acknowledged that it is in Hungary’s interest to remain an ICC member, echoing earlier calls by Hungarian lawyers that the withdrawal would tarnish Hungary’s global standing.
Orbán had announced Hungary’s intention to withdraw from the ICC in April 2025, while hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The withdrawal is set to take effect on 2 June 2026. If not halted, Hungary will become the only EU member state outside the ICC.
The Magyar government has a short window to reverse course, and time is of the essence. With a supermajority in the parliament and clear precedents from other countries halting their own withdrawals from the court, nothing stands in the way of swift, decisive action.
Notably, Magyar also publicly acknowledged Hungary’s obligations as an ICC member and committed to executing the court’s arrest warrant against Netanyahu should he visit Hungary for the 1956 Revolution Anniversary in October 2026. This is an important shift from the previous government, which flouted its legal obligation to arrest Netanyahu.
It’s a powerful reminder to all individuals wanted by the court that their world has gotten smaller. Other EU leaders who have, at times, waivered in their own commitment to cooperate with the court should publicly project the same clarity.
Once in office, Hungary’s new government should turn the page and restore respect for fundamental rights and democratic safeguards in the country. Reversing the Orbán government’s withdrawal from the ICC is one immediate step the new government should take to break with his predecessor’s anti-rights record and Hungary’s isolation within the EU.
Magyar’s statements are a good start. He should now follow through and bring Hungary back into the community of states committed to ensuring justice for serious international crimes.
Thailand: 44 Opposition Politicians Face Lifetime Ban from Politics
(Bangkok) – Thai authorities will prosecute 44 opposition politicians for sponsoring a bill to reform Thailand’s lèse-majesté (insulting the monarchy) law, which could result in a lifetime ban from politics, Human Rights Watch said today.
On April 24, 2026, the Supreme Court’s Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Position accepted a case from the National Anti-Corruption Commission that alleges 44 politicians from the now-dissolved opposition Move Forward Party had “failed to uphold and maintain the democratic system of government with the King as Head of State” by proposing a bill to amend the lèse-majesté law, section 112 of the penal code.
“By prosecuting these opposition politicians, Thai authorities are sending a chilling message that the country’s abusive ‘insulting the monarchy’ law has become as sacrosanct as the monarchy it’s meant to protect,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This politically motivated case is yet another blow to Thailand’s teetering efforts to restore respect for human rights and democratic rule.”
In addition to the former Move Forward Party members, the 44 accused include 10 newly elected members of parliament from the opposition People’s Party, including the party leader Natthaphong Ruengpanyawut and other key members.
The continued use of the lèse-majesté law, which carries a punishment of from 3 to 15 years in prison for each offense, is an excessive restriction on the right to freedom of expression, Human Rights Watch said.
Since the military coup in 2014, Thailand has prosecuted at least 1,997 people for exercising their rights to free expression and peaceful assembly, including at least 291 on lèse-majesté charges. Thai authorities have often detained critics of the monarchy for months before trial without access to bail.
Criticizing the abusive use of royal insult charges to suppress free expression bears serious consequences in Thailand, Human Rights Watch said. In January 2024, the Constitutional Court ruled that the campaign by opposition politicians to amend the lèse-majesté law amounted to an attempt to abolish Thailand’s constitutional democracy with the king as head of state.
On that basis, the Constitutional Court dissolved the Move Forward Party in August 2024 and imposed a 10-year ban from politics on the party’s executives. In February 2026, the Bangkok Criminal Court sentenced a prominent free speech activist, Pimsiri Petchnamrob, to 32 months in prison on a lèse-majesté charge for her speech referring to a 2017 statement by the United Nations expert on freedom of expression that royal insult laws should have no place in a democratic country.
Any punishment of these 44 politicians, let alone a lifetime political ban, would seriously violate their rights to freedom of expression, association, and democratic participation protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which Thailand ratified in 1996, Human Rights Watch said.
The UN Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has stated in its General Comment No. 34 that laws such as those for lèse-majesté “should not provide for more severe penalties solely on the basis of the identity of the person that may have been impugned” and that governments “should not prohibit criticism of institutions.”
Thailand, a current member of the UN Human Rights Council, supported multiple recommendations regarding freedom of expression from its 2021 Universal Periodic Review but has made no progress implementing them. The Human Rights Council will conduct its next review of Thailand in November.
“The UN and concerned governments should urge Thailand to promote free expression and other fundamental freedoms rather than suppress them,” Pearson said. “The Thai government could make a strong response by dropping the case against the 44 opposition politicians and beginning serious and open discussions of the lèse-majesté law.”
Zimbabwe: Crackdown on Student Protesters Intensifies
(Johannesburg) – Zimbabwean authorities have harassed, abducted, and arbitrarily detained student leaders protesting a proposed constitutional amendment to extend presidential terms, Human Rights Watch said today.
Constitutional Amendment No 3 would extend the terms of office for the president and members of parliament from five to seven years, effectively postponing the 2028 elections until 2030. Student leaders affiliated with the Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU) mobilized young people to attend public consultations on the proposed amendment held across Zimbabwe.
“Students who speak out to safeguard their country’s democracy should not face abduction, arrest, and ill-treatment,” said Idriss Ali Nassah, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities in Zimbabwe should reverse course and allow people to express their views freely without facing retaliation.”
Human Rights Watch documented seven attacks against the student leaders.
Munashe Dongonda, 25, ZINASU’s secretary general, and Denford Sithole, 22, attended a public consultation in Nketa suburb in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city, on March 30. After Sithole spoke against the amendment, men in civilian clothes accosted him and Dongonda, accusing the students of “wanting to cause chaos.” Dongonda told Human Rights Watch that the men dragged him and two other students outside, beat them, and then forced Sithole into their vehicle, a white Toyota double-cabin, and drove off.
Sithole said he suspected that the four men in the vehicle were members of the feared Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO). He said the men threatened to kill him and drove to an office building where six other men, also in civilian clothes, joined in interrogating and assaulting him. He said one of them repeatedly hit him on the head with an empty wine bottle while others beat him. They accused him of working to overthrow the government and demanded to know who was funding the students opposing the amendment. They forced him to allow them to inspect his bank account records and demanded his parents’ home address.
After about six hours, they took him to Bulawayo Central Police Station and told the police to “find something to charge him with.” Police charged Sithole with “disorderly conduct.” He paid a US$30 fine and was released after signing an “admission of guilt,” which Human Rights Watch has seen. Sithole, a final-year engineering student, is recovering from injuries from his abduction and torture. He has suspended his studies, left Bulawayo, and is in hiding after noticing he was under constant surveillance from suspected state security agents and fearing for his life.
Tafara Magodora, 23, a student leader at the Bindura University of Science Education, was abducted on March 30 in Bindura, in Mashonaland Central province, about 90 kilometers northeast of Harare, the capital. He said that at around 9 a.m., he was on his way to organize transportation for students to attend a public consultation on the amendment when a white Toyota vehicle without number plates appeared, and three people in civilian clothes got out and surrounded him. They accused him of being on “a police wanted list since last year.” He said that when he demanded identification, they forced him into the car and beat him.
After about an hour of driving around with him, they took him to Bindura Central Police Station, where officers accused him of “causing chaos at the university.” The police held him for two days, then charged him with assault and released him on bail. His next court appearance is on April 28. When he was released, Magodora said two suspected state security agents ordered him to leave Bindura for his own good, warning him that something would happen if he did not stop his activism. Magodora is also in hiding and has not attended class since.
On April 14, police arrested Emmanuel Sitima, former president of ZINASU, and Takunda Mhuka, a ZINASU provincial leader, both 24. Based on their charge sheet seen by Human Rights Watch, they are accused of “malicious damage to property” for allegedly breaking a window in the home of the chairperson of the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), and for distributing fliers reading “Save Zimbabwe Campaign, No to 2030.” “No to 2030” is a slogan opponents to the amendment have adopted. The value of the damaged property was set at $10. A court denied bail to Sitima and Mhuka and they remain in custody, with their next court appearance scheduled for April 24.
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights on April 15 reported that student leaders were “under siege” after police raided ZINASU’s offices in Harare. ZINASU National Coordinator Ashlegh Pfunye, 28, told Human Rights Watch that he viewed the raid as an attack on the broader student movement. “All we are doing is to exercise our democratic right to speak out against the proposed constitutional amendment, but we are being hunted down like criminals,” he said. “Some student leaders are in hiding and others have been suspended from university because of their activism opposing the amendment.”
David Coltart, the mayor of Bulawayo and a former minister of education in the 2009-2013 Government of National Unity, told Human Rights Watch that targeting student leaders is meant to have a “chilling effect” on those opposing the amendment. “We have had students abducted and detained,” he said. “We have had to find safe houses for three student leaders who were being threatened after speaking out against the amendment.”
Targeting the student leaders is part of a broader crackdown on perceived opponents to the amendment. In August 2025, police arrested three Midlands State University students, who are facing charges of subverting a constitutional government after allegedly distributing 12 fliers opposing the amendment. The three spent fourteen days in detention before being granted bail, while awaiting trial.
In November 2025, two students, Marlvin Madanda, 23, and Lindon Zanga, 21, were reportedly abducted while campaigning on campus at the Chinhoyi University of Technology in the city of Chinhoyi, in central-northern Zimbabwe. They were found the next day after being allegedly assaulted and tortured. Police arrested them and charged them with “disorderly conduct.” They were scheduled to appear in court on April 23, 2026.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly expressed concern at the slow pace of human rights reform in Zimbabwe, including only minimal changes to repressive laws, a lack of security sector reform, and repression of civic and political activity.
The actions by the Zimbabwean authorities violate a range of fundamental human rights protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to which Zimbabwe is a party, including prohibitions against arbitrary arrest and detention and inhuman or degrading treatment.
“Zimbabwe should restore integrity to the constitutional amendment process by ending this crackdown against student leaders and activists and holding their abusers accountable,” Nassah said. “A constitution should not be amended on the back of violence, intimidation, abductions, and unjust arrests.”
Uganda: Sovereignty Bill Threatens Speech, Assembly
(Nairobi) – A bill before Uganda’s parliament that proposes sweeping controls over “foreign funding” and political activity threatens fundamental rights and could be used to shut down civil society, Human Rights Watch said today. The bill emulates laws adopted in recent years by other rights-abusing governments, which have been deemed to violate international law.
On April 15, 2026, Internal Affairs State Minister David Muhoozi introduced the Protection of Sovereignty Bill of 2026 before parliament for its first reading. The bill proposes criminalizing vaguely defined activities that promote the “interests of a foreigner against the interests of Uganda.” The bill is part of a broader campaign by the Ugandan government to clamp down on free expression and peaceful assembly, that has included arresting and bringing criminal charges against political opponents and their supporters, as well as other critics of government officials.
“The Protection of Sovereignty Bill is the latest example of the government’s efforts to stifle dissent and inhibit political or social organizing and participation,” said Oryem Nyeko, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The proposed bill copies a repressive tool used by other abusive governments to crush exercise of rights and stigmatize human rights defenders, independent media and other dissenting voices.”
The public has been given until April 24 to submit comments while two parliamentary committees consider and make recommendations before the full parliament will vote on it.
The bill contains several broad provisions that prohibit a foreign agent from promoting “the interests of foreigners.” Foreigners are defined to include Ugandan citizens living outside the country. “Promoting” is vaguely defined to include carrying out activities “related to the implementation of Government policy,” and receiving money to organize or organizing meetings about foreign policy. Violators can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, a fine, or both.
Foreign agents accused of influencing “the will and consent” of Ugandans participating in elections, or receiving money from a foreigner without written approval from the government may face up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The bill proposes burdensome requirements to act as a foreign agent and would require as yet undefined reporting. It would also allow the Internal Affairs Ministry to arbitrarily inspect an agent’s “premises” without a court order.
The law also would also prohibit engaging or participating in “unlawful” demonstrations or assembly, an overly broad interference in the right to freedom of assembly that would violate Uganda’s obligations under international law.
The provisions of the bill would compound several legislative and policy measures that already undermine and restrict the work of civil society, human rights defenders, and other independent institutions, Human Rights Watch said.
The 2016 Non-Governmental Organisations Act gives the government broad powers to suspend, blacklist, or revoke organizations’ licenses, and provides for excessive punitive measures for staff. On January 12, days before Uganda’s national elections, the government ordered at least 10 nongovernmental organizations to cease their operations indefinitely. In March, the government froze their bank accounts as it “conducts investigations.” Directors of some of the groups told the media that they were not informed of the reasons.
Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (Banjul Charter) both of which Uganda has ratified, laws may only limit the rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association when necessary to achieve a narrow range of legitimate goals, such as to protect national security or the rights of others. Any restrictions must be proportionate to the interest to be protected and they must be the least intrusive measures capable of achieving the desired aim. The provisions in Sovereignty Bill blatantly fail this test, Human Rights Watch said.
The bill draws on similar laws passed in Russia and allied countries that are used to try to shut down civil society, and which the UN Human Rights Committee, which oversees compliance with the ICCPR, and the European Court of Human Rights have declared violate international human rights law. These bodies have made clear that these laws are no more than a fig leaf to mask efforts to prevent exercise of fundamental rights and protect those in power from scrutiny or being held accountable.
“Civil society groups have a key role in the effective protection of human rights, rule of law and democratic institutions in any country,” Nyeko said, “Uganda’s parliament members should outright reject this effort to further stifle Ugandans’ rights and focus their efforts on promoting and protecting the right to free association, alongside other fundamental civil and political rights.”
Vietnam: New Retaliatory Decree Targets Lawyers
(Berlin) – A new governmental decree undermines the independence of lawyers in Vietnam and will impede efforts to hold officials accountable, Human Rights Watch said today. The authorities should repeal the decree.
Decree 109/2026, which takes effect May 18, 2026, empowers the police and government officials at the local (commune) level to revoke lawyers’ licenses and impose severe fines for vaguely worded offenses such as “insulting” officials or “obstructing” the functioning of state agencies. The regulation poses new threats in an already hostile environment for the legal profession in Vietnam.
“Decree 109 represents a serious new threat to Vietnam’s already politicized legal system,” said Patricia Gossman, senior associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately repeal the decree and ensure that lawyers can carry out their professional duties without fear of government retaliation.”
Decree 109 applies to civil and criminal proceedings, including land disputes, and includes sanctions for “administrative violations” such as “insulting the honor, dignity, or reputation of persons authorized to conduct legal proceedings.” Other alleged violations include conduct aimed at “delaying, prolonging, or creating difficulties for, or obstructing, the operations of procedural bodies” and acts that “cause harm to the legitimate rights and interests of agencies, organizations, or individuals.” The latter evokes the nearly identical language of article 331 of the Penal Code, which the authorities have used to prosecute citizens who have criticized the government or exposed wrongdoing by officials.
The decree grants local authorities and the police extraordinary authority over lawyers, making any statement by a lawyer deemed “criticism” punishable as an “insult.” If a lawyer were to advise a client to remain silent during police interrogation, that could be interpreted as “creating difficulties for, or obstructing” police operations. Because these provisions would most often be invoked in cases in which local officials and the police are themselves the defendants, they create a direct conflict of interest, putting the authority to punish lawyers in the hands of the very officials those lawyers are trying to hold accountable.
Decree 109 has already resulted in harassment and intimidation of lawyers by local officials. On April 13, soon after Decree 109 was issued but before it takes effect, the People’s Committee of Long Thanh commune in Dong Nai province wrote to the Bar Association of Dong Nai province, urging them “to admonish … organizations and individuals who exploit people’s trust by guiding them to repeatedly submit numerous complaints and denunciations to leaders and authoritative agencies—actions that undermine credibility and pose a risk to local security and public order.”
The decree specifies that advising clients to file “unlawful complaints or denunciations” is also grounds for punishment, but it does not specify what constitutes an “unlawful” complaint. The violations set out in this decree are likely to deter lawyers from taking cases involving land rights activists or whistleblowers as clients.
Local officials under Decree 109 can punish Vietnamese lawyers by revoking their licenses for up to nine months, and those of international lawyers for up to three months and impose fines of up to 40 million VND (US$1,520). Previously, Decree 121/2025 of June 2025 allowed provincial chairpersons to grant and revoke law licenses: a move lawyers then criticized because it bypassed the Ministry of Justice and bodies such as the bar association, which normally grant and revoke licenses.
Decree 109 also states that advising clients to join a protest (“to gather in large numbers to disrupt public order”) may temporarily cost a lawyer their license to practice.
Along with the decree, the government has taken other measures to intimidate lawyers. In April, the Ministry of Public Security published a draft proposal to amend the criminal code to hold lawyers criminally liable for “failing to report a client who is preparing to commit a crime.”
“The Vietnamese government boasts about an era of rising prosperity under the country’s new leadership,” Gossman said. “But by curbing the independence of lawyers and increasing the unchecked power of the police, Vietnam is strengthening its single party authoritarian rule.”